Thanks in part to Du Bois's urging, 700,000 African Americans register for the military, but shortly later the war office says that no non-white officer above the level of captain will be commissioned. This means that black officers will be noncommissioned, and may have control but not really have the authority and command to take charge of others. Noncommissioned officers are generally not people who have gone to college. The African American officers will be chosen from a pool of mostly uneducated enlisted privates. The White House also decides that 70 percent of the black soldiers are trained for dirty manual labor and supply jobs instead of for fighting.

By 1917 in East St. Louis the friction between white labor members of the new union the AFL and black workers has grown. The skilled union members tell unskilled white immigrants and new workers to join their...